The Birdman cometh.

I am not one of those people who tries to see every film nominated for an Academy Award each year. But I usually end up seeing one or two of the Best Picture nominees, just because they sound intriguing. I fulfilled my annual quota for this year by seeing "Birdman" this weekend. (Don't ask me about any of the other movies; this is the only one I've seen so far.)

"Birdman" has been picking up a ton of awards, including Golden Globes for Best Screenplay and Best Actor, which went to its star, Michael Keaton. The movie has received nine Oscar nominations, and the buzz is that it has a good shot at winning Best Picture.

As a fan of magic realism, I'm thrilled to see attention heaped on this movie -- although I'm sure part of the excitement in Hollywood is due to the subject matter. Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, an actor whose career peaked more than 20 years ago, when he starred as Birdman in a series of superhero action movies. (Keaton did a lucrative star turn as Batman more than 20 years ago. Meta much?) Now he's attempting to jump-start his career by writing, directing, and starring in a drama based on a Raymond Carver story called "What We Talk About When We Talk about Love." And he's spent his last dime to bring the play to Broadway.

Carver's story is under copyright, so although you can find illegal copies online, I won't link to any of them (here's a plot summary, though, if you're interested). Like the story, the movie's subplots involve the many forms of love.

But the movie's main plot involves the eternal conflict inherent in every creative field in these capitalistic times: Serious Art vs. Popular Entertainment. Riggan can't escape his past -- especially since his superhero alter ego keeps growling at him that he's better than this crappy production and would be better off going back to Hollywood. A theater critic out-and-out tells him that she's going to give the show a horrible review because she doesn't like his kind waltzing onto Broadway like they own the place. His co-star Mike Shiner (played by Edward Norton) is a big name on Broadway who doesn't respect Riggan, either. (Of course, I couldn't help being reminded throughout of the literary-vs.-genre-fiction debate.)

As with any movie about acting, there's a blurring of art and reality. The cinematography makes it appear as if the film was shot in a single take, which adds to the magic-realistic feel. As the scenes change, the camera follows the characters through labyrinthine backstage hallways. It's no accident that at one point, Riggan surprises Shiner as he's reading Borges' Labyrinths.

I don't know whether "Birdman" is the best movie released last year, but I very much enjoyed it. We'll see here shortly what the Academy thinks; the Oscars will be awarded February 22nd. The voters do like movies about their craft (witness "The Artist" winning Best Picture in 2012), so "Birdman" could be a shoo-in. Time will tell.

***
One programming note: I'm attending the Tucson Festival of Books March 14th and 15th. If you're planning to go, look for the BookGoodies booth -- that's where I'll be, with a whole bunch of my fellow indie authors. Officially, I'm supposed to sign Seized Saturday afternoon and Seasons of the Fool Sunday morning -- but I'm not averse to signing any of my other books at any time. So if you'll be the festival, too, come on by.

***
These moments of movie blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Tapestry.

First, the news:
* Boo! Volume Two is out! I'm honored to be included, as some of my favorite indie authors also have stories in this anthology. Revenge of the Remora is my first-ever vampire story, so please be gentle with me. (It turns out that you can read my whole story via the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon -- but I hope you'll consider buying the book anyhow, because the other 12 stories in the collection are terrific.)
* Humongous thanks to those of you who voted for my covers in the 2014 BookGoodies Cover Contest. I was very excited to learn that Annealed won a Judge's Choice Award. Feel free to head over and take a look at the winners -- there were some beautiful covers in this year's contest.

***
I must have had flash fiction (and knitting) on the brain this afternoon. Before I dove into editing Seasons of the Fool, I found myself dashing off a little something. It may end up in the short story collection I've been mulling over, or it may not. 

Anyway, here it is. I'm calling it Tapestry.

Pschemp via wikimedia commons

This is supposed to be fun.

She stared, disconsolate, at the more-or-less even stitches pooling in her lap. This was her first attempt at knitting a garment. She intended to make something she could wear to work, so she had chosen smooth, black yarn in a fine gauge. The clerk in the yarn shop had persuaded her to pick a simple pattern; “elegant,” the woman had called it, with a bit of interesting detail at the neckline that the clerk assured her would be well within her capabilities as a beginning knitter. 

But she was nowhere near the neckline yet. Not even close. Oh, the bottom ribbing had been kind of interesting (*knit, purl, repeat from *) but she had completed that ages ago. Now she was into what a more accomplished friend called the boring torso: nothing but knit stitches, around and around, seemingly forever.

The pattern called for twenty-one inches of boring torso.

She measured her knitting again. Still just five inches! How could that be? She was sure she had done at least two rounds since the last time she measured. Shouldn’t she have gained a quarter-inch, at least?

She’d picked black because she wore a lot of black. She wanted to look professional at work. Professional, yet sophisticated. Elegant. 

That shop clerk must have had her pegged in about half a second.

She’d never get to twenty-one inches. She’d stab herself in the eye first. Or maybe she’d go back to the shop and stab that clerk in the eye. Now there was an idea with promise.

She wrinkled her nose and cast about for a less violent form of salvation. Her eyes landed on a bag of yarn in the corner, and lit up.

In her first flush of enthusiasm over her new hobby, she had gone a little crazy at her local yarn shop. Colors, textures, weights had meant nothing to her; she had just picked out any yarn that spoke to her. One skein each. Not nearly enough of anything to make anything from.

But she was pretty sure they would all go with black.

She set her project aside and dumped the bag’s contents on the floor: sapphire blue, rich purple, loamy greenish-brown, vibrant fuschia. A rusty orange-red that had reminded her of autumn leaves. Turquoise as brilliant as a summer sky. 

She greeted the riot of color like an old friend, stroking each skein against her cheek as she sorted them into piles. Choosing five skeins that she thought looked amazing together, she gave the rest a loving pat as she laid them gently back in the bag.

Then she ripped her boring torso back to the ribbing and began again. The resulting sweater might not turn out to be elegant, or even professional. But damn it, it was going to be fun.

*** 

Have a fun week, everybody.

***

These moments of colorful blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

On beginnings, endings, and carrying on.

Before I get to the post, I wanted to mention a couple of housekeeping things:

• Indies Unlimited is featuring the trailer for SwanSong today. (Thanks, guys!) If you haven't had a chance to see it yet -- or if you would like to see some pictures of swans, accompanied by 30 seconds of classical piano music -- click on through and check it out.
• Voting in the BookGoodies Cover Contest continues through September 7th. My covers for Seized and Annealed are finalists in the Fantasy category. Big thanks to everybody who has voted so far -- you're all my new best friends. If you haven't had a chance yet, I'd appreciate it if you would click through and leave a comment on the cover of your choice.

 ***

"Letting Go" by gnuckx - commons.wikimedia.org

It's been one of those weeks here at hearth/myth.

To begin with, my nephew is starting college this fall, and he and my sister-in-law stayed with us for a few days before he was allowed to move into the dorm.

I've always considered college to be a rite of passage. The ultimate objective of child-rearing, after all, is to turn a child into a functional, independent adult. Going off to college gives a young adult the opportunity to take a big step toward that objective while still living in a relatively structured environment.

Of course, this means the parent has to let go of the kid. A lot of parents today pay lip service to the idea, but in practice, they still want to shield their kids from everything bad that might happen in their lives -- up to and including running interference for them. The technical term for this is helicopter parenting. Sending the kid to college is often a rude awakening for these parents, because the administration treats students as adults, even when the parents don't want them to: "What do you mean, you won't send me a copy of my kid's grades? I'm paying for his education! I have a right to know whether I need to call the professor!" Um, no. No, you don't. Your child is an adult in the eyes of the law, and his success or failure in college is between him and his professors.

College administrators work to establish this with parents during freshman orientation. They set up a separate set of meetings for the parents, and they also note on the orientation agenda the date and time for the parents to go home. Otherwise, some parents would hang around until classes start. Maybe even beyond.

Anyway, kudos to my nephew for attending orientation on his own, and congrats to my sister-in-law for not insisting on accompanying him.

While all that was going on this week, I got word that the friend of a dear friend had died. Yesterday, I attended her memorial service. It was lovely, with much singing and laughter along with the requisite tears.

I'm told that the woman who died believed that her purpose in life was to give and receive love. That's a pretty good life's purpose, I think. And judging by the outpouring of grief and love that I saw and felt in the church yesterday, I have no doubt she succeeded.

Going away to college is an end to childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Death is the end to life on this planet and the beginning of the spirit's next adventure. In each case, we leave things behind -- not the least of which is people who remember us as we were, and who must now carry on without us. And that -- the necessity of carrying on when the people we love have moved on -- may be the hardest rite of passage of all.

***
These moments of bloggy carrying on have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Meet the new knitting chair.

I know, I know: you guys have been on the edge of your seats since last Sunday, wondering about the verdict on the new knitting chair. ("Edge of your seats" -- heh. I see what I did there.)

Anyway, and without further ado, here's the chair in its new habitat. It's in exactly the same place in the living room as the old chair; my daughter Kitty took this from the opposite side, I guess so she could show off how it swivels.

The delivery process went off with a minimum of complications, and the chair itself is just as comfy as the one I tried in the store. I'm very pleased so far. The real key will be how it holds up, but of course we won't know that for some time yet.

The rest of the week has been a mixed bag of this and that. I started a Google Community for Indies Unlimited last week so I could write a how-to post about the process of creating one. It was easy, so since I was on a roll, I went ahead and made my own fan page at Google Plus. Feel free to head over and put my page in your one of your circles, if you're on G+. There's a widget in the sidebar that will get you there, too.

I'm looking for alternatives to Facebook that don't arbitrarily limit the number of people your posts are shown to. I'm not yet ready to give up on the Book of Faces -- too many people still go there. But a lot of indie authors -- and other small business owners, too -- are frustrated with the site. Here we've got hundreds of likes on our pages, yet only a tiny fraction of our followers see a post unless we pay Facebook for an ad. Anyway, G+ is one of the places I'm evaluating. We'll see how it goes.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's move on.

June is going to be a rockin' and rollin' month here at hearth/myth. I've received Scorched Earth back from my editor, and it looks like we're on track for release around June 11th. The book trailer was posted at YouTube last night. You can go there to watch it, or you can see it right here:

 
I'm planning another Facebook party to celebrate the release of Scorched Earth, since we had so much fun last time. Save the date, if you would, for Saturday, June 14th, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern time. I'll have more info about the party next week.

And if that's not enough: Two of my stories have been accepted into the newest BookGoodies Authors' anthology. It'll be called Summer Dreams, and once again, all proceeds will be going to charity. Our editor released the cover today. That's it over on the left.

Neither of my stories in this book is set in the Pipe Woman Chronicles universe -- they are completely new. In "The Door into Summer," I tried my hand at magic realism. You'll have to let me know whether I hit the mark.

If all goes as planned, Summer Dreams will drop for the Kindle next Sunday, June 8th.

We've also begun planning for our second Halloween anthology, to be called 13 Bites, Vol. 2. More on that as we get closer to October. I'm not sure what I'll be writing yet for that book, but I'm thinking Nanabush might get up to some mischief. We'll see.

And thanks to those of you who downloaded The Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus when it was featured at Free Kindle Books & Tips yesterday. I hope you enjoy it!

***
These moments of scattered blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Bits and bites.

It's been a scattered sort of day here, so this post is liable to be a little disjointed. Here's what's going on:

• 13 Bites launched today, October 13th! And Yrs Trly has two stories in it. Well, one and a smidge. The full story is called "A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Gotta Do," and it's a Pipe Woman Chronicles prequel featuring Joseph and George; the smidge is a flash fiction piece I wrote for a prompt at Indies Unlimited not long ago. In all, we have 13 stories (hence, 13 "bites") from 10 authors, all of whom are members of the BookGoodies Authors' Group on Facebook. BookGoodies is turning into a pretty rad site for both authors and readers; we recently surpassed 1,000 author interviews on the site, and we have a chat board where we talk about all sorts of book-related stuff. Anyway, this anthology was the brainchild of Alan Seeger, who proposed the project, volunteered to be our editor, and has done a bang-up job. Joseph Picard did the cover art, and he also has a story in the book. We'll have a paperback version eventually, but the Kindle edition is available right now on Amazon for $2.99. We're donating all proceeds to children's literacy programs around the world. It was a neat project to be involved in -- I got to make some new friends, we may all find new readers, and as a bonus, we'll be helping kids learn to read. And, oh yeah, we have a website for the book, too: 13Bites.com
• I spent all day yesterday with my head down in my computer, tinkering with Crosswind. And I'm happy to say that when I was done playing around with it, I felt it was ready to send off to my editor and beta reader. So the e-mail went out early this morning. Whoo hoo! If all goes well (i.e., if they don't send it back and tell me it stinks), it should be available sometime around November 20th. We'll have a cover reveal here presently....
• In addition, the final "bridge" short story will be out next week. I expect "Prophecy" will be available around the 23rd or so, but I'll let everybody know in the usual social media places when it's up and running.
• Leading up to Crosswind's release, I'm going to do another round of free days for the five Pipe Woman Chronicles books. It will start this Wednesday, October 16th, with Seized being free Wednesday through Saturday. Next week it'll be Fissured's turn; then Tapped will be free during Halloween week; then Gravid; and then Annealed. Please let your friends and neighbors know!
• I guess it's good that I'm getting all this out of the way this week, because NaNoWriMo starts in a couple of weeks. Aieee.... My project this year is the first draft of the second book in the Land, Sea, Sky trilogy, which will be called Undertow.

I think that's it for now... Oh, wait! There is one other thing. My daughter Kat entered this week's flash fiction contest at Indies Unlimited. You can read her entry here. Voting commences Wednesday, but don't worry -- I'll give you a heads-up.

Have a great week, everyone.

***
This moment of bloggy disconnect has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The button stash.

This is only about half the stash.

The other day, I began thinking about knitting a new jacket for myself. I have the pattern picked out, and I bought the yarn last spring. (It's Jean Frost's Boyfriend Jacket and Glenfiddich Wool worsted weight in a purplish blue, if you care.) But I hadn't yet looked in the button stash to see if I had anything suitable. So I pulled out the drawer and went spelunking.

The vast majority of buttons in my stash came from my mother. She was an inveterate sewer and crocheter, but an indifferent knitter. When I sorted through her things after she died five years ago, I found several storage boxes full of fabric, zippers and bias tape in a range of colors and lengths, a couple of shoeboxes full of thread, and buttons out the wazoo. (I also found half-worked projects, including crocheted doilies using hooks so small that I'd go blind trying to complete them, and a knitted cable cardigan that she'd abandoned in the midst of the boring torso. I sympathized. Then I tossed the whole thing -- for a number of reasons, not least of which was that the pattern was missing. I might have been able to puzzle it out, but it just wasn't worth it.)

The state of Mom's button stash, when I found it, speaks volumes about who she was. For one thing, all of the stuff in this picture was dumped into a drawer in her sewing machine cabinet. She had strung together some of those that matched (sometimes on thread, sometimes on twist-ties), but there are plenty more sets that she didn't match up. Maybe she gave up.

You might notice that some of the buttons in the picture above (particularly the big brown one in the center at the very bottom) look as if they'd been used. That's because they had. Both of my parents grew up during the Great Depression, and when money was scarce, they learned to reuse. Mom was not above pulling the buttons off of a worn-out piece of clothing before throwing it away.  The thing is, she collected them way faster than she reused them -- hence the massive stash.

Sometimes, too, I think Mom had a bit of magpie in her. Even with this collection at home, she would buy cards of new buttons if the price was right, or if she liked them. Also in the stash are five or six cards, three buttons to a card, of 1/2" brown buttons with a sort of candy-striped brown-and-white rim. They're cute -- I used some of them on a baby sweater awhile back -- but what would have possessed her to buy fifteen of them? An adult-sized shirt only takes six or seven.

There's history in here, too, of various kinds. I've found mother-of-pearl buttons still on their cards, Bakelite plastic buttons, cards of buttons from the '60s priced at 29 cents (those days are long gone....). And too, sometimes I'll come across a lone button left over from an outfit Mom made for me (and wish she had scavenged them when I outgrew the outfit because they were cute!).

I should sort through the whole stash at some point and get rid of the stuff I know I'll never use: the basic white dress shirt buttons, the gray ones from my father's work uniforms, and the random other fasteners that got mixed in over the years. I should do that. I should.

But for now, I'll keep spelunking. I did come up with candidates for this jacket in several different styles, but I decided to wait on a final choice until the project is done. Who knows? Maybe none of them will work, and I'll have to go to the fabric store. I suspect I may have a little magpie in me, too.

***
In case you missed my Facebook post, I'm pretty excited that I'll have two pieces in the upcoming BookGoodies fiction anthology. One is a Pipe Woman Chronicles prequel starring Joseph and George. The name of the book is 13 Bites and it should hit Amazon next Sunday, October 13th. I'll have more info (including, with any luck, a buy link) next week.

***
Oh! And happy second blogiversary to Indies Unlimited, and many happy returns of the day! To mark the toddlerhood of our li'l nuclear-powered deathstar superblog, I saved the cake from the hearth/myth blogiversary in August. It's only a little stale.

Seriously, I am honored to be a part of such a talented and knowledgeable group of authors and bloggers. That they're also a lot of fun to hang out with is...well, it's icing on the cake. Happy anniversary to Stephen Hise, K.S. Brooks, and the rest of the gang.

 ***
This moment of button-spelunking blogginess has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

hearth/myth is two!

~Magickal Graphics~

 

 Happy bloggiversary to me,

Happy bloggiversary to me!

Is it "bloggiversary" or "bloggoversary"? Hmm...pretty sure the Oxford Dictionary hasn't picked this one up yet.

Regardless, hearth/myth turned two on Friday.  The photo seems appropriate for a two-year-old, don't you think?

It is customary (as in: this is what I did last year) to take stock of where we are today, compared to where we were a year ago.  So: this week last year, I was about to unleash Fissured upon an unsuspecting public, and I hadn't even begun writing Tapped yet.

Today, of course, all five books of the Pipe Women Chronicles have been released, and I'm starting work on the next series in Naomi's universe -- Land, Sea, Sky. Here's a fun fact about the Pipe Woman Chronicles: During the free promotions I ran for the books this summer, Tapped blew all the others out of the water with 4,249 downloads worldwide. Next was Seized with 1,936 downloads; then Annealed (1,685), Fissured (1,453)  and Gravid (1,372).  If you assume the download numbers are based in large part on cover appeal, you can extrapolate that glowy wolves beat out flaming birds, and white buffalo are the least appealing.

 

I'm still on the staff at Indies Unlimited, and my work has been featured in a couple of their publications this year -- including the terrific First Chapters, which, if you haven't picked up a copy yet, you should.  I've also started doing LynneQuisitions, my interviews of big and biggish names in indie publishing, which is a lot of fun and lets me pretend to be a reporter again.

Alas, the Indie Exchange has morphed yet again, and I have lost track of it.  But I've been kicking up my involvement with BookGoodies. Look for more on that over the next few months.

In the awards department, Seized got a little attention from both Big Al's Books and Pals Reader's Choice Awards and the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  And I picked up a couple of wins in the weekly flash fiction contests at Indies Unlimited.  I'm planning to devote a page at the new website to my flash fiction entries, so that they don't get lost in the shuffle.

 

And -- how could I forget? -- I started Rursday Reads in January.  I've had at least one author get excited to be a Rursday -- go figure!

For the coming year: Look for a Pipe Woman Chronicles omnibus e-book by Yule, as well as (fingers crossed!) the first book in the Land, Sea, Sky series. Past that, who knows? I guess we'll all find out together, won't we?

***

This bloggiversary moment is brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

NaNo or No?

So it has come to this, my annual dilemma:  Should I participate in National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, which I often shorten further to NaNo) this year or not?

The pros:  As alert readers of this blog know, this would be my fourth NaNo.  My earlier NaNos were in 2008, 2009, and 2011.  Each time, I won -- that is, I reached the goal of 50,000 words in 30 days.  And each time, I got a publishable book out of it (The Maidens' War in '08, SwanSong in '09, and Seized last year.)  I have an idea teed up, too -- book four of "The Pipe Woman Chronicles" -- and I've even got an outline-ish thing written for it already.  I've got to write the book anyway, and November is as good a time as any.  So why not just commit?

Of course, there are also the usual and customary, all-purpose pros: NaNo is a great experience for anyone who has ever said to him- or herself, "I've got this great idea for a book."  It's also perfect for anyone who gets bogged down in revising while writing the first draft, because there just isn't enough time in 30 days for those kinds of shenanigans.  It's a first draft!  It's supposed to stink!  Just keep writing!

If you think writing is too solitary, NaNo volunteers have organized a bunch of events throughout the month, at which you can sit in a room and tap away at your keyboard with a bunch of other people who are tapping away at their keyboards.  (I mean, I don't get the attraction, personally.  But a lot of other people do.)  For instant socializing gratification, there are message boards on the NaNo site and Facebook groups galore.  If you'd rather work alone, that's okay, too -- you never have to see another human, and you really only have to go to the website twice: once to sign up, and once to dump your manuscript into NaNo's official word counting device so you can collect your swag.

The cons:  No rule exists that says I have to do NaNo every year; you will note that I sat out 2010, and the world did not end thereby.  Also, I'm going to lose four days at the very beginning of the month for World Fantasy Convention; I might get to squeeze in a little writing in Toronto, but it certainly won't amount to 6,668 words.  I've begun NaNo with a deficit before and it's not a lot of fun.  Besides, I've already won three times -- what else have I got to prove?  And to be honest, I'm still kind of in recovery mode after powering through the first draft of Tapped in about three weeks in late August and early September.  And if Tapped is going to be published in early December, I'm going to have to spend some time in November getting it ready to go.

The hedge:  But I don't have to win, do I?  I can write as much of the fourth book as possible during November, and if I don't get to 50,000 words by the 30th, oh well, at least I'll be farther along on it than I would have been otherwise.  And I've proven with Tapped that I can write 50,000 words in less than 30 days, so it's entirely possible that I could win NaNo this year, even with all the other distractions.  Plus I don't have to drive anywhere for Thanksgiving this year, so I'll have most of that four-day weekend to catch up.

I don't have to win.  Do I?  Or do I?

***
News:  Speaking of NaNo, the BookGoodies podcast interview was postponed to this week, due to the host coming down with strep throat.  I had strep back in my radio days, so I was totally sympathetic.  The new date is this Thursday, October 25th.  I'll post the particulars on my Facebook page.

I thought it was time to do a little housekeeping around here.  I moved all the book trailers to their own tab.  You will also note, if you scroll waaaaaaay down to the bottom of the page, I've added a link to Preditors & Editors -- a great website for checking out whether the agent, editing service, etc., you're about to do business with is legit.

And I've now got my very own Pinterest page.  My boards ain't works of art, but feel free to use the link to the left and check them out.

***
These moments of bloggy indecision have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

All praise to the Google!

http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2009/10/21

My desktop computer is in the shop, so I'm writing this post on my netbook computer with the teeny-tiny 10-inch screen.  At least I was able to plug my desktop's keyboard and mouse into the netbook, so it's not as alien a setup as it might be otherwise.  But still, I'm getting a crick in my neck from the unaccustomed screen position. And I can't watch videos on this underpowered machine.  Not that I watch a lot of videos anyway, but it's the idea that I can't that's bothering me.

Why am I whining about all of this?  (Kudos to you if you've stuck around thus far.  Your whining threshold must be pretty high!)  It's because this inconvenience has reminded me again of how much teh intarwebz have invaded my life.

I have a desktop computer at work; at home, I have my own desktop computer, as well as a netbook, a Nook Tablet, and an iPhone.  An information search about any question, no matter how low-priority the answer, is at my fingertips for 98 percent of my waking hours (it would be 100 percent, but sometimes I can't get a signal on my phone) and even for a portion of my sleeping hours.  (I've been awakened more than once by a chime from my phone, telling me somebody just mentioned me on Twitter.)

Before we went to Europe, though, my friend Kim and I checked into the cost of an international data roaming plan, and quickly concluded it would be more fiscally responsible just to turn data reception off for the duration of the trip.  It was a good idea in theory -- but in practice, oh, was it painful.  At least once a day, one of us would come up with some question in the course of conversation that the other couldn't answer.  The "I don't know" response was always accompanied by a disgusted, "But if we had data, we could look it up!"

Mark my words:  Someday the pre-intarwebz days will be known as the New Dark Ages.  It was a time when we lived in ignorance and fear.  A time when a search for answers involved delving into actual books made of actual paper (the horror!) and perusing digests, indices, tables of contents, and other arcane documents, in hopes one of them would point you to a book that actually contained the information you sought.  A time when librarians held vast power.  A time when we posed questions, such as, "Who won the Oscar for best cinematography in 1963?" and almost invariably got this response: "Huh.  I dunno."

You kids don't know how good you have it.  All praise to the Google!

***
Now that that's out of my system, I have some actual news.

1.  This Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, I'll be doing a podcast for BookGoodies on winning at NaNoWriMo.  You do know about NaNoWriMo, don't you?  If you've ever said to yourself, "I oughta write a book," you really should consider participating.  Anyway, I don't have particulars yet about when the podcast will be available. (It's probably on my other computer....)  I'll post the info to my Facebook page when I find out.
2.  As of this past week, I am now a weekly contributor to Indies Unlimited.  The Evil Mastermind has promised me a gruel upgrade as compensation for my extra duties. I'll let you know how it goes.
3.  The program for World Fantasy Convention 2012 is out, and I'm in it!  I'll be doing a reading on Friday morning, Nov. 2.  I also plan to participate in the mass autographing session that night.  If by some happenstance, you'll be in Toronto for the convention, please look for me.
4.  Oh, and by the way, the first draft of Tapped: Book Three of the Pipe Woman Chronicles is complete.  We're moving up the publication schedule to take advantage of the Christmas shopping season, so look for the book at your favorite online retailer starting in early December.

***
I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.